Ministry, NGOs ink climate MoU

The first memorandum of understanding on coping with climate change was
signed on Nov. 18 between the Ministry of Natural Resources and
Environment, Vietnamese Non-governmental Organisations and Climate
Change (VNGO&CC) and the Climate Change Working Group (CCWG).

Under the MoU, tentative activities for 2012 include a dialogue on
mainstreaming climate change adaptation and disaster risk education into
the socio-economic development plan at local levels, and exchanging
information and experiences in applying community- and ecosystem-based
approaches to adaptation.

Vu Thi Bich Hop,
chairwoman of VNGO&CC, said the MoU will be a favourable premise for
participation and contributions by NGOs together with the Vietnamese
government in efforts to cope with climate change.

“We elected the two provinces of Ben Tre and Quang Nam to carry out
pilot projects on community-based adaptation and improving public
awareness for ecosystem-based adaptation,” said Nguyen Thi Yen, chair of
the CCWG.

To date, 11 out of 63 provinces and
cities have finished their coping-with-climate-change plans, most of
which are central coastal and Mekong Delta coastal provinces. These
plans fall under the national target programme to respond to climate
change, said Truong Duc Tri, deputy head of the Department of
Meteorology, Hydrology and Climate Change.

The
department plans to compile strategies for young people from the primary
to the postgraduate levels on how to approach information relating to
climate change, he said.

He added that the support
programme to respond to climate change will receive nearly 265 million
USD in donations from the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the
French Development Agency, the World Bank, the Australian Agency for
International Development and Korea Eximbank in 2012.

More than 80 percent of the population and all Government staff will
receive basic information about climate change and its impact by 2015,
one of the key targets under the National Target Programme to respond to
climate change.

The budget for implementing
national target programme activities in the 2009-2015 period is
estimated to reach 1.9 trillion VND (93.6 million USD), with 50 percent
coming from foreign sources./.